Build It: Tips and Tools to Get Started

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You need a good surface on which to work. It should be flat, dry and have adequate space around the edges so you can easily retrieve small items you drop. Trust me, you will drop small items.

If you don’t have an antistatic mat, it’s worth hanging onto those large antistatic envelopes that are used to ship motherboards. These are very handy for laying out expansion boards during a motherboard swap, for example. And although we love our geeky little headlamp, the overall area should be brightly and evenly lit.

The area should be physically large enough to hold your PC case lying with its guts exposed. You also want space to lay out hard drives, CD/DVD drives and cables. It’s also very useful to have a small organizer for the various screws, nuts and bolts that are used in today’s personal computers.

Final Thoughts

Proper preparation goes a long ways towards making your upgrade or system building project go smoothly. Having the right tools, and a good work area, means you’ll have fewer nagging doubts when you run into problems with a new system or when you first boot up a motherboard upgrade.